In about 1994, while a junior at NYU, I went for a walk with my camera in SoHo. I took this shot looking down Thompson street at the World Trade Center. Of course I didn't know then that the towers would be gone within seven years. But the kind of contrast you see in this photo, between the smaller-scaled brownstones and tenements of SoHo with the soaring WTC skyscrapers, is one you'd often find walking in lower Manhattan. The Trade Center towered above everything, and was a constant presence.
What's also crazy about this photo is that it actually shows to the left on Thompson the apartment building that Valarie was living in at the time. We were still about a year away from meeting.
Another recent print I scanned from an old album, like the WTC/Thompson shot above, is this one from Nye Beach in Newport in 2000. It's a little postcard-like, I'll admit: picturesque, but just a little too cliche. However, since I was actually there at the time experiencing the real thing, it's a nice keepsake.
One of the photos I meant to include in my previous post about scanning old albums was this one from a 1998 trip to the Bend area. I'm embarrassed to say I can't remember and can't tell if this is Mt. Bachelor or Broken top, which are right across from each other. The upper portion of the frame is a bit over-exposed, but I like how the frame is comprised of several different layers or portions of the frame: water, then grass and a few scattered small evergreen trees, then the more solid timberline behind that, and finally the mountain peak and sky.
Two other shots from that same 1998 Bend and Bachelor trip I liked are of smaller details. Both were taken beside a creek flowing out of Todd Lake (itself fed by glaciers from the Three Sisters) with a strong current in the place I stopped. One photo is of a small little plant beside the white water, and the other is of the water a few feet away going over a log. Did I mention that Valarie and I find Todd Lake to be one of our favorite and most beautiful, peaceful places on the planet? I haven't been there for years, actually, but looking at these photos makes me yearn to go back. I've got a book reading tentatively set for late August in Bend, and I'm hoping we can scoot over to Todd Lake the next morning before heading home.
Finally there's this shot, taken of my sister sometime in the mid-90s when she was an elementary schooler. We'd gone to the Grocery Outlet in hometown McMinnville with one of our parents, and I remember staging Sara with this ridiculously huge can of beans. Better open a window, Sara! I also like the puffy yellow-green jacket. The Grocery Outlet, as its name suggests, was quite a hilarious amalgamation of cheap foods, with lots of off-brand and generic labels, chintzy knicknacks that didn't sell at other stores, and expiration date to be mindful of.
My fashion-forward tendencies were clearly adopted at an early age
Posted by: Sara | August 08, 2007 at 01:56 PM